If you have a child or a Pit bull, you should read this:

Dogs love me. I sit down in a strange house with a dog that "hates men" and 5 minutes later I have a dog in my lap. I've been in more houses and more yards with angry dogs that wouldn't let anyone even by the fence, much less inside, than I can count. Every time hoping like [beeep] that the person I was dealing with wasn't going to fight, because the dog would have to die and I don't want to kill the dog. I worked k9 as an agitator as one of my side roles. I can feel a dog that's on the edge. I can glance at a charging dog and know if it's a bite or a bluff, or just a running dog.

In my entire career I took exactly 1 bite. Homocidal/suicidal guy with a gun. I'm 2nd on scene, step in the house and get told the guy grabbed 2 pistols and dove out the bedroom window. I turn around to step back out and start working, little 12 pounds furball SHOOTS out from under a table and took a chunk of my right calf. I love dogs but I would have booted that one in any other situation. More important things on my plate so I just scraped him off on the door as I went out.
F'ing little dogs man
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Interesting experience Indy. Those little lap dogs seem to do the most biting but here is some food for thought. Average recorded bite strength by breed or species: Pit bull-265 p.s.i., Rottwieler-328 p.s.i., Mastiff-400 p.s.i.. For comparison an African lion has a bite strength over 600 p.s.i.. Your little fur ball,depending on weight and jaw size/structure, probably had a bite strength of less than 100 p.s.i.. The fur ball took a chunk out of your calf, but it could have been much worse.
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I've been looking into buying a Turkish Kangal for a few years, I've been in no hurry because I don't have the space for that large of a dog but in a few months I am going to have my house sold and buy some land.

I want a big dog, I seem to get along best with larger animals, I just think most are more level headed than small things that need a big attitude to survive. But I am not much of a dog person though, less so when my favorite hobby became hunting coyotes and then even lesser so when I switched career paths, became a farrier and started working with 60-80 different horses a month, I'm not sure what changed but something did. At this point if I am not careful when I meet new dogs I can look at small to average size dogs the wrong way and make them freak out, half them pee on the spot, and I like dogs even less because of it. I work at places with great pyranees, german shephards and a couple others I have no problem with, I've been lightly bit a few times by german shephards but each time it was me stepping on them or nearly running them over and we got along afterwards.

Kangals are massive dogs with some massive power, speaking of bite force a kangal bite from what I read is 746 psi, more than a freaking lion, more than three times a pit bull...

I found them because I was looking for a large dog breed with a decent life span, show breeders have wrecked mastiffs, great danes and some of the others, those breeds are geriatric at 7 years old but kangals in America are fresh enough out of the working fields in Turkey that they have very few health problems and average a 14 year life span.

They are a herd protection dog that commonly kill wolves in Turkey but are supposed to be very smart and calm and great with kids, it's their nature to protect things smaller than itself. Hopefully by this summer I will have a chunk of land in an area infested with fox, coyotes and wolves and the dog would have birds, goats, horses and who knows what else to protect and do it's job. I've thought about it for a few years, talked to a couple U.S. breeders(many of their males reach 175lbs) and someone that worked in Turkey for years and is now on the board of the Kangal Club of America, when I told the lady from the kangal club that there would be wolves around she acted like I was talking about taking a springer grouse hunting. I still am not sure if it's something I should do. I'm not an idiot that wants some aggressive dog for something to brag about, I certainly don't want a dog that would harm someone, I just want a large healthy dog that isn't spun up like a crack head and the fact that a kangal naturally protects smaller animals is a plus. I don't want to make a mistake and end up with a liability that could hurt someone else.

I dont mean to derail this thread at all but some input could be helpful, I've spent years quietly thinking about this.
 
"It was irritating. What was annoying was all the jokes afterwards about being attacked by a lintball."
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The breed I've favored for the past 30 years is the Chesapeake Bay retriever. I've always favored the larger breeds also. Not nearly as big and toothy as the T. Kangal but big enough for me. The Chessie scares a lot of people because of their size and they do show a lot of teeth. I think they are one of the easiest breeds to get along with. Good luck with your Kangal if you decide to get one.
 
The people who live near me raise pitbulls for fighting. One got loose one day and attacked my dog in my backyard. The dog had broken a logging chain. The dogs owner was pissed when had to come pick up the DEAD dog he just paid $1500 for.
 
I know a family that had a great pit bull. It had been in the family for years and was a great pet and very protective of the whole family. Then one day for whatever reason, it lashed out at their three year old daughter. In a flash their daughter was dead and their lives were turned upside down. They had always said how their pit bull had been raised right and what a great pet it was. It was a great pet until it wasn't. There are to many other choices to ignore the statistics.
 
Animals... are animals. It takes a lot of training to overcome instinct and drive. And it only takes a moment for that training to lapse and bad things happen. Some animals have more drive than others. The dogs I trust around the family have a drive to protect their family and are trained to enhance it. I don't want a dog I have to train to overcome it. Too much experience to think that way.

My current dog will scare the crap out of anyone he runs at. But he's a total dork. He has a deep scary bark. But if anything spooks him he hauls [beeep] and literally hides behind me. Which is hilarious. I trust him, 0 worries. He's a 110 lbs of solid muscle goofball.

The other end of the spectrum, I used to work with carlos. Carlos was a Belgian malinois. That's the breed my dept prefered for patrol dogs. Carlos was insanely well trained, and had insanely high drive. And as I liked to say, carlos is f'ing insane. His handler was the head k9 trainer. He had wolf and wolf hybrids as pets., and even for him carlos was an animal he had to keep a constant eye on. Carlos always works with a muzzle.

I remember a training session where I was in a car, carlos was supposed to entry through an open window and detain me until his handler secured me. Carlos doesn't know that's the plan, I'm just leaving 1 window down and letting him work it out. So we start I run, handler is shouting orders. I get to the car, he sends carlos. I close the door, and hers the dog. 1 lap around and through the window he comes. Only holy [beeep], he broke the muzzle and Carlos actions are not detain, it's bite. His drive, turned up to 11 at this point.

So the handler realizes what's going on, can't order Carlos off. So he hits the collar. I know the collar, I know it's at max, I know that hit will make a pro linebacker curl up and beg, and it's only slowing down carlos. I'm calm, I'm strong, I'm a [beeep] of a fighter and I know how to fight dogs really well. And it still a looooong oh [beeep] moment until his handler got there to take him off me.

Despite that, Carlos was a terific patrol dog. We got along fabulously, when we weren't fighting. When he worked alongside me, it was always a good thing. He died over a stupid accident and it was a bad day when it happened. And despite that, I would never keep him around my kids.
 
Ours is named Coffee. The grand kid named her so it works. She is 12 also. The one before her was Fritz. They are great little companions.
 
A couple questions/observations.
What are the numbers in that chart on first page as far as kills/100k animals per breed?

With pits, besides people killed, how many other pets (dogs, cats, livestock,etc) were killed in addition too people?

And how often were the kills from a single animal as opposed to a pack of two or more?

I'm not a fan of pits at all. My brother had a cross breed that bit everyone in his family. He finally had it put down, then got another pit that scares the [beeep] out of me.
My best friend had a nice lap dog that was attacked and killed by a stray pit that was never found.
Luckily, of all the pits that my customers have, have all been sweet dogs.
 
I always wonder why people defend mean a$$ dogs breeds. I spent a fair amount of time doing animal control work. My experience with pit and rott owners are mostly the POS types. The best dog whisperer in the world can't untrain a dog's natural instinct to go crazy without provocation. If a person wants to own one then own one, but the violent temperament is always present. The only time I was significantly bit on-duty was a mean a$$ Chessy; still wearing the scar to this day. But from my experience, the farm dogs (herding breeds) are far more aggressive. However, I encounter them more often than the above breeds.

I have a GENERAL rule; If the dog has a curly tail or supposed to have a curly tail it is likely a bitter; a straight tail hunting dog can generally be approached without too much danger.
 
My neighbors moved in in 2004, every year their pit bull was running loose. I asked several times for them to contain their dog. She knew the dog was chasing deer, saying that "he just wants to play with them, they are his friends". I told her that the dog was over at my place regularly, that I threw sharp sticks at him hoping to hurt him so he wouldn't come back. One day it was on my coyote bait, I shot at it with a 12ga with 8 shot, at about 100 yards I hoped it would hurt him but not really harm him. They asked if his barking bothered me, I said "only when I hear it". One day I invited the male owner over to shoot archery, his dog was barking while he was at my place, he said "wow, you can really hear freddy". Yep. They told me that he was afraid of gunshots and loud noises, so I learned that when the dog was barking at 11:pm, I could fire one round of the 45 out the window and the dog would shut up.
After 12 years or so, they NEVER kept their dog contained. I saw it chasing deer on more than one ocassion. It roamed the neighborhood regularly. One day, I was out splitting wood with an axe, that day the pit bull snuck up on me 3 times. I would turn around and the dog was very close, it was disconcerting at the least.
That day cost me $30,000 in attorneys fees, for a dog that I feel was hunting ME.

No one can ever convince me that pit bulls are great pets and gentle dogs. B.S. There is a reason insurance companies do not like them, there is a reason they are responsible for more human deaths. Some animal bred for numerous generations to fight or for its aggressiveness should not be roaming free, or in a household with children.
 
Pit bull owners:

Studies show that pit bull owners employ strategies to disguise the true nature of the breed by engaging in distortions, denial and overcompensation and by projecting blame after attacks.


Not normal dog owners:

To understand the experience of owning a negatively perceived dog, Tufts Center for Animals and Public Policy did a case study on pit bull owners that was published in 2000. Researchers found that with "outlaw" breeds, such as pit bulls, the human-dog relationship is sociologically more complex than previously known. Owners of pit bulls, they discovered, directly feel the stigma targeted at their breed and resort to various tactics to mitigate it. These strategies included:

"passing their dogs as breeds other than pit bulls, denying that their behavior is biologically determined, debunking adverse media coverage, using humor, emphasizing counter-stereotypical behavior, avoiding stereotypical equipment or accessories, taking preventive measures, or becoming breed ambassadors."

https://www.dogsbite.org/dangerous-dogs-pit-bull-owners.php
 
37 victims so far in 2020,all fatalities. Most were victims of Pit bull or Pit bull-mix attacks. About one in three were children. List does not include maulings not resulting in death and maulings leading to death by other means.
 
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